What Does Genesis 46:3 Mean?

Then he said, "I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation." The divine self-identification: "I am God, the God of your father": establishes the authority behind the address. This is not a spiritual experience of uncertain origin; this is the God who has spoken to Abraham and Isaac, the God of the patriarchal covenant, speaking to the third-generation patriarch at the threshold of Egypt. The identification grounds the following words in the covenant relationship that has defined the family since Genesis 12.

"Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt": the address directly to Jacob's fear. Going to Egypt for a patriarch meant leaving the promised land: the land promised to Abraham ("to your offspring I will give this land": Genesis 12:7), to Isaac ("for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands": Genesis 26:3), and to Jacob himself ("the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring": Genesis 28:13). Going to Egypt is moving away from the land of promise, and Jacob knows it. God addresses this fear directly: do not be afraid. The journey to Egypt is not abandonment of the promise; it is the next chapter of the promise's fulfillment.

"For there I will make you into a great nation": the promise that was given to Abraham ("I will make of you a great nation": Genesis 12:2) is now given specifically to Jacob in connection with the Egypt journey: what Abraham was promised in leaving Ur, Jacob is now promised in leaving Canaan. Egypt is the womb of the nation. The family of seventy that goes down in Genesis 46 will emerge from Egypt as the nation that Exodus 1 describes: "the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them." God is directing the family to Egypt specifically because Egypt is where the family will become a nation.